CHAPTER XXIII. 



Priming, Insects, Fertilising and Influence of Scion on the Stock. 



BEYOND cutting back, for several years, the long canes 

 that form the initial growth of the apple and pear, in 

 order to compel them to broaden out their heads, no 

 further pruning will be required for those trees, especially 

 after they come into bearing. But the almost universal idea 

 among advanced fruit-growers seems to be that it is quite im- 

 possible to overdo pruning of the peach. Now, the fact is, 

 but for the continuous cultivation usually given the peach or- 

 chard, thus forcing out an unnatural growth of long canes, 

 there would be no occasion to go to the expense of pruning 

 at all. After setting out a peach tree, the top should be cut 

 back to about one foot and all shoots allowed to grow for a 

 month or two, when the strongest and straightest should be 

 selected and all the others cut away. By fall, such a tree, if 

 let alone, will have made a well-rounded, bushy head, branch- 

 ing evenly all around right from the ground up. The peach 

 is naturally a bush, not a tree, and loves to have its entire 

 body shaded, and will need no further pruning until it comes 

 fairly well into bearing, when, in order to bring it to the 

 proper shape for the economical gathering of the fruit, the 

 whole head should be sheared off level about six or seven feet 

 above the ground. I know that the prevailing idea is that a 

 tree allowed to grow naturally up to the third or fourth year 

 would be a mass of branches, and overbear. This is not true, 

 as any one can prove, for, having abundant wood, the peach 

 tree will distribute its fruit-buds evenly all over the shoots at 

 intervals of six inches or more, and not concentrate them con- 

 tinuously, as it will where a large part of the wood has been 

 removed. The top-pruning, advised above, should be done 

 when the fruit is as large as marbles and not before growth 

 starts, as that would allow the tree to renew its head from its 



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